Friday, July 15, 2005

4 more Google Maps mashups!

Global Coordinate - Although a very busy page and somewhat lagging because of all the data which is being compiled as the page loads, I can see this mashup having some potential if the creator continues to work on it. The site aggregates country data from various sources likeearthobservatory.nasa.gov (this data alone makes it a cool mashup) news sources, earthquake data, webcams and UNESCO world heritage sites and overlays it on a Gmap. It also allows to post your own information to it as well - a truly interactive atlas!

Our exercise crazy friend, Tim, bought a really crazy watch by Garmin called the Forerunner 201. It's basically a sweat-proof GPS unit for your wrist to help you keep excellent records of your workout activities. Best part: you can hook it up to your computer and download an XML file of the latitudes, longitudes, altitudes, times, calories burned, and some other goodies for each workout. A few days ago, Tim mentioned that he was disappointed with the services offered for visualizing the data from his Forerunner. And so in an effort to help out both Tim and other web developers working on Google Map API implementations, we created this tutorial based off a practical application.

Google Maps + Web Guestbook = MyGuestMap - Here is a tool that is sure to be replicated in hundreds of website resource sites like Bravenet in the months to come. MyGuestmap allows your visitors to add pins to a map, showing where they are and leaving a message. This site has a registration page, and an admin panel to configure your guestmap once you set it up. At the very least, be sure to place a marker on your location!

Geo Serendipity - What do you get when you cross Google Maps with sites listed in Geourl.org? You get Geo-Serendipity which allows you look for sites with 10, 50 or 100kilometerss from the site you enter. The catch is the site *has* to be listed into GeoURL.org. Try this site for an example of how it works: "http://sharl.haun.org/d/" - Once entered, the results for that site look like this. Kind of cool. There is a similar tool here, with far fewer bells and whistles.